Xbox Live Dies Because I Used Prepaid Card While On Auto-Renewal Plan

Nathan tried to save some money on his Xbox Live subscription by buying a prepaid $50 card to avoid having to pay the recently increased annual fee of $60. While he did so, he failed to replace his expired credit card on file with a valid card.

The Microsoftbots did not like this plan, and kept trying to bill him $60. When Nathan called customer service he was told that he had to pay the $60 or his account would be canceled. The CSR also said he’d have to forfeit his prepaid subscription.

He writes:

I subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, an online feature of the Xbox 360 entertainment console. I have been a continued member of the service since November,
2005.

In November 2010, I received email notification that my subscription to the service would be auto-renewed to my credit card on file for $59.99.

The credit card on file had expired and been canceled during the summer of 2010. The annual service fee for Xbox Live Gold had been $49.99, which I had agreed to auto-renew to in December 2009. Seeing as the price increase had gone up, I purchased a pre-paid 1 Year subscription card to Xbox Live Gold from a local Costco store. I applied this code to my account in the middle of December, 2010. Evidently, Xbox Live tried to bill my expired credit card for the auto-renew fee of $59.99 and was unsuccessful. I put the new pre-paid card into my account and the Xbox Live billing account page I have showed my subscription being credited an additional year.

In the end of December and through January, 2011, I continued to receive email notifications from Microsoft saying that I had a balance due for $59.99.

I contacted Xbox Live billing on 1/17/2011 to see if the situation could be straightened out.

I was first told by a CSR that my account had to be billed $59.99 or my account would be canceled within days. When asked what would happened to my pre-paid card that I applied to my account, the CSR said it would be forfeited.

Nathan escalated his complaint and got the same answer from a supervisor, who added that he had to pay for two years upfront if he wanted to continue his service.

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If I had it do over again, I would never use a credit card to subscribe to live. Prepaid cards only. They make it difficult to stop or suspend the recurring charges. Plus you can get deals on prepaid cards. Paying by card is always full price.

And it’s near impossible to remove the last credit card from the account. I had no card tied to my account, but then my friend wanted to buy me that Scott Pilgrim Xbox Live Arcade game. He put his card info in to buy it, and now I can’t get his card off the account without registering a different card instead.

I had the same experience. I didn’t actually take my credit card off, as it’s still good and MS has not made any unauthorized charges, but there are options to update your CC info or change payment method.

Now it’s entirely possible, though implausible, that were I try to click on either option, MS would give me the runaround, though I’m incredulous.

This is not to say that if something funky happened, as it did with the OP, you wouldn’t be able to find a single person in CS with two brain cells to rub together that could do something about it. That, OTOH, is entirely plausible.

My beef with Microsoft is that they keep re-enabling auto-renew on my account, even though I bought two $30 12 month cards from Dell and turned off the renewal. I could see the renewal getting turned on accidentally when they rebooted their system this last fall but it happened two or three times since then. I’m gad they send me emails to let me know that they made the change (without asking or permission) but I want them to just stop changing the status.

For those that want to know, I do have a cc on file with them for purchasing MS points to get some of the amazing deals of the week (and there have been several good ones lately).

Interesting to know.. since I am in that exact same situation now.. While my account is active, they keep sending me notices that they cannot bill my expired card on record…. I am also looking online to find deals on xbox live subscription fees… Maybe I will change from billed in advance, to month to month, and then just apply the xbox live game card after the first months billing.. although I suspect I will lose or a few dollars in that transaction, or at least break even.

In my experience, renewing via purchased cards prevents auto renew from triggering until to term of the card(s) is expired, but the complaint in the original posting seems to suggest this might not always be the case.

I’ve always used prepaid cards. I do it for both the points and the gold subscription. It works great too because I went 6 months without even touching my Xbox after my Gold subscription was up last time… I buy the cards when they are on sale and when I have time to play again, I put in the code and boom, I have it for another year and my account just goes back to what it was before, no problems what so ever!

I don’t see how Microsoft’s handling of this situation is logical at all, and it doesn’t seem legal either. How can they unilaterally forfeit a 1-year subscription that has been paid and tell him he has to pay it again? That sounds very much like stealing, and even if it is in the EULA, it’s likely buried so deeply that the OP couldn’t reasonably have known about it. Any competent company would have found a way to credit his account for the year he purchased.

Yeah, that’s the point where you ask the phone rep for the contact info for the Agent for Service of Process for Microsoft in your state (the guy who gets served legal papers on Microsoft’s behalf in a lawsuit). Asking that can loosen stuck CSRs.

Ok, but have you heard that Modern Warfare 2 is practically unplayable on the PS3 right now? A lot of games are having a problem with hackers because Sony hasn’t been keeping up with them. It’s worth the extra money to spend.

That’s pretty ridiculous, and I hope they can get this sorted out. I let my account lapse this past year and they tried everything to make me renew. I lost netflix on the xbox, but it’s still feels good not paying for gold anymore.

I recently switched from month-to-month to a prepaid card on my Live account and didn’t have any problems doing so. I probably won’t even keep XBL when I finally build my Media Center PC, since the only thing I really have Live for is Netflix. Don’t know what happened when he switched, but it looks like it got pretty FUBAR’d.

i find it baffling how the simplest of tasks can be impossible for some people to accomplish…

i pay for xbox live by credit card using auto-renewal. i have since 2002. last year when my card expired i was informed of this via email and i updated the expiration date. also, when informed that i was about to auto-renew, i was given a change to buy two years at less than $50/yr, which i did.

This has happened to me before too. I let me credit card on file expire, and then didn’t end up touching the XBox for 2 months. When I went to re-activate it, they charged me not only for the next month, but for the 2 months I didn’t use. I should have fought it at the time but I didn’t.

The trick to this is to “cancel” your gold subscription, and then use the pre-paid card.

If, prior to going out and buying the pre-paid card, he had called Microsoft, he could have cancelled his gold account. That doesn’t render the gamertag unusable, it just reverts it to Xbox Live Silver. From there, you can apply the pre-paid card.

Microsoft may need to outright cancel the gold membership to get the card to stop charging, which is problematic because the gold membership has already now been re-upped using the pre-paid card.

I am completely confused.. if he added a prepaid credit card then he shouldve removed all other credit cards and made that one the active one… if he added a 12 month subscription card then he would have seen the months added onto his account instantly.. and if the problem was the prepaid credit card.. then the only way he would loose the funds on his prepaid credit card is if he through out the card because then the funds would still be on the card.. and the subscription card is the same until u enter the code it still good.. what am i missing here.. confused.. seems like its his fault in some way even though i dont like Microsoft I dont see it being there fault. CONFUSED….

“Prepaid card” is referring to one of the subscription cards you can buy. This is how I always renew my Gold subscription and get Points for DLC. It is cheaper and I do not need to give my credit card info to Microsoft for auto-renewal. I had a similar situation to the OP back in the original XBOX days of XBOX Live. My Live subscription expired after months of me not using it. I only knew about it because I started getting emails that they cannot bill my expired card. After talking to a support rep I was able to get my account cancelled and and the charges against my card stopped. Ever since that I refuse to give them my cc info.

I understand but he is completely confused and confusing us.. because if he put in a subscription card code he would have seen the months added onto his account all he had do was check it would have seen how many more months he had instantly.. and then if he entered it wrong the card would still have the 12 months or whatever it doesnt void the card until its applied to an account.. so it comes down to “what did he do what the card” and its “his fault for not making sure it was applied correctly”..

It appears something went wrong and they attempted to bill his defunct credit card before he put in the prepaid card code. He did this instead of entering in a new credit card number for the account. This caused some sort of rift in the space-time continuum and now Microsoft is holding his gold account hostage unless he pays for two years in full, which is not cool.

I should clarify. As I understand it, he originally purchased the subscription with a credit card that is now expired. It appears he put in the 12-month subscription card after his account expired and they attempted auto-renew. They are sending notifications that he has a balance due of $59.99 now. When he called to get the charge removed, they are claiming he will need to pay it, and will lose the months added by the card, which is BS on Microsoft’s part. He should keep calling and demanding that the charge and the auto-renew be removed. Also, when they upped the price, they should have made everyone on the auto-renew system agree to the new price or disable auto-renew.

i really cant understand how thats possible because if his account went from gold to whats called silver which means you cant play multiplayer online anymore but your account never gets canceled in any way unless u cancel it. then if he either entered a new credit card because his old one was expired or entered a new subscription he would then see his account would have the additional months instantly and go back to gold.. no matter how you look at it i dont see how anyone can blame microsoft.

We are blaming them because they are holding his gold account hostage somewhat. They are saying he has to pay for more months even though his gold account is current or we will be instantly moved to the free account and lose any remaining months.

December 2009: Guy pays for 1 year of Gold with credit card, which enables Auto-renew.
Summer 2010: Guy’s card expires that he used to purchase Gold.
November 2010: Guy gets email that they will automatically bill him $60 in December to renew Live Subscription.
December ?? 2010: Microsoft attempting to charge expired card to renew service.
Mid December 2010: Guy applies 12-month subscription card to regain Gold service for 12 months.
Then until 1/17/2011: Guy continues to receive billing notifications. Contacts customer service. Speaks with supervisor. They say he will need to pay up-front for 2 years of service or his account will be cancelled(By the way it is worded, cancelled meaning the account disabled, not dropped to Silver). They also state that the months added by the prepaid subscription card will be forfeit.

This last part is why everyone is blaming Microsoft. Now, it is partly the guy’s fault for letting the account get billed to an expired card before adding the subscription card. However, Microsoft should be handling this better. I think cancelling the charges and making him pay for the month that the account lapsed (and giving him a full month for it) would be the better way to go. Also, if there is a change in prices, they should force everyone to acknowledge this before being opted back into auto-renew.

This just happened to me. I learned the hard way to never let XBOX live have a credit or debit card number. Besides the possible fraud that can occur, they will try to hold your card hostage with the only way out being to cancel your XBOX live account. That’s what they did to me. The way to get around if you don’t want to cancel your account is to let you XBOX live account expire, then remove the card on file from your account (which in my opinion is a tedious process) and renew with a XBOX prepaid card. In my case all of my account info. remained intact and my credit card was no longer on file with them.

I have been in the same position, but haven’t experienced any problems. After receving my auto-renew reminder email I turned off auto-renew, bought a pre-paid card at a cheaper rate online, and updated my account. Nobody tried to charge my card or force me to add on another year. Something doesn’t feel right about this post………

I ran into almost the exact same issue. I had a card that was expiring so I decided to get a prepaid one instead. I entered the prepaid card the day of the expiration and it still was acting like I needed to put in a new card. I spent WAY to long talking to customer service to only have to give up and go ahead and pay for another year with a new CC. I was very pissed. I’ve never had good experiences with Xbox Customer Service… don’t get me started…

you dont have to have a credit card on file that where everyone is confused you can buy the subscription cards and points at stores or online and then just enter the code.. u can now even purchase it instantly on Amazon where they give you the code instantly or email it to u or a friend.. ive done it for subscriptions and points.

Actually, you’re the one who appears to be confused by the nature of this issue. He applied his pre-paid card just fine. Microsoft wants money out of him simply because he had his account set to auto-renew, and says that the pre-paid subscription will be nullified whether or not he pays them.

ok so I know for a fact that if you have it on Auto renew and you enter a subscription card code then it just adds those months to the account even if you have it with a credit card on file whether current or not.. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would then tell an active gold member that there going to cancel him.. is that what hes implying .. Then he needs to call and ask for a simple “supervisor” has he tried that cant.. maybe he spoke to 1 person and gave up.. thats why they all have supervisors…

In my experience, autorenewal doesn’t process when you have additional time available on you account. I’m going to go ahead and speculate that this guy let his account lapse while autorenewal was still turned on and referencing an expired card. The service attempted to charge the card, unsuccessfully, then he applied a prepaid card. So from MS’s perspective, you have an account with an unresolved failed charge. The TOS clearly states they can revoke permission for such a matter. IMHO, it would be foolish to do so, and they should let him retroactively cancel the failed charge. But I also know how simple and how prudent it would have been to log into the xbox live website as a user or call their customer service line to make sure to turn off autorenewal when the warning emails started to arrive. He would have had several weeks to do so and inaction would signal agreement to be charged. So really, both sides are wrong in this one.

you dont have to have a credit card on file that where everyone is confused you can buy the subscription cards and points at stores or online and then just enter the code.. u can now even purchase it instantly on Amazon where they give you the code instantly or email it to u or a friend.. ive done it for subscriptions and points.

I don’t think that’s the problem here, friend. He already had the credit card on file then tried to use a prepaid card. The issue is not that he can’t just get a prepaid card–he already did that. The problem is they claim he still owes them money because they tried to bill his defunct credit card before he used the code. Does this help at all?

XBox Live customer service is a total joke. Several years ago I bought a 1000 point card and when I scratched off the silver backing to get the code there was nothing there. I called them and, at their request, faxed in a copy of the card, only to be told they determined the code was gone due to “over-scratching” the code covering.

Furthermore, the one halfway reasonable person I spoke to said that they were aware of this issue and redesigning the card with a tear-off strip as opposed to the scratch-off covering, but regardless of this they wouldn’t refund the card or credit me the points. I spoke to numerous supervisors, all said the same thing. I even went to the BBB and XBox Live support wouldn’t budge.

what do u want them to do to take ur word for it and just credit u 1000 points.. if we only lived in a world were people didnt lie.. WOW.. they actually made a movie about that with Ricky whatever his name that was on the Golden Globes the other day.. Dude they just cant take ur word for it be reasonable.

I donâ€™t know why youâ€™re having such a hard time with this. Itâ€™s really quite simple.

See, a person working in the capacity as a rep for the company acknowledged that measures were being taken to eliminate further instances of the very problem that Admiral_John had with his card. That means that they were aware of it before he ever contacted them about it. Moreover, when asked to do so, Admiral_John provided Microsoft proof that his claim was legitimate in the form of a faxed copy of the card.

Contrary to what you believe as an apparent dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft apologist, itâ€™s not as if he called them up with an outlandish claim and expected them to take it at face value.

Nathan, it’s time to unleash your EECB. You’ve given them money, they don’t need to charge you shit, and you don’t owe them anything. You need to make them understand that – I believe there’s some good EECB info out there for Live. Good luck.

I would make no sense to send EECB when it just seems that its his fault.. because if you try to understand his issue it makes no sense what so ever.. some way or another it just seems like its his fault.. i cant seem to understand how something so simple to do got so screwed up.. and I always want to screw big business and get whatever you can.. but there has to be some logic to it.. and i dont think hes painted the whole picture for us i think theres more to this story than hes telling us..

READ THAT BACK TO URSELF.. and tell me if any of that you believe why would xbox cancel anything.. that just makes no sense.. come on be realistic.. either u dont play xbox at all and have no clue what ur talking about and really dont know how to renew xbox memberships or u also want to blame someone else.. nope thats not the way it works.. Ive had xbox memberships in different ways for many years.. some time I renew with a credit card and then go in and delete that credit card so they dont auto renew some times ive purchased online and enter the code and now i actually have a family plan membership that includes 4 memberships.. and i got that for a steal because i had a full year still on my account and they had a special because it had just come out and they credited me $60 off the new family plan membership price because I still had 12 months left on my membership so I got an additional 3 accounts for $60 each with 13 months of service.. So i got a great deal but thats not the point here the point is you have no clue how XBOX works or else you would not see the logic in his statements and then would see that the whole scenario makes no sense what so ever.. and yes i do love Xbox live the service not the company and not Microsoft in any way and would love for the consumer to get more even when the consumer deserves.. im just trying to make sense of the situation so then you, me and others can help..

“READ THAT BACK TO URSELF.. and tell me if any of that you believe why would xbox cancel anything..”

Well, being that we’re talking about the very same company that took out a bunch of innocent userâ€™s XBox Live Gold accounts when they went on that banning spree last year, and being that weâ€™re talking about the very same company that responded to those userâ€™s complaints by basically telling them that they were shit out of luck, I can totally believe that Microsoft would cancel this guyâ€™s Gold account for no good reason.

If this is the case, yes, it would be wrong for microsoft to cancel the prepaid card but it would also have been wrong for the user to have not disabled the automatic resubscription. This is the only way the quoted story would make any sense to me and fit with my own experience of having used prepaid cards then autorenewal and now prepaid cards again on xbox live.

I went through this with MS when I renewed with one of their in-dash ads, and was sent through hell after they canceled my Gold account because of nearly the same thing (expired card on account, yet they canceled it in spite of the new renewal that was also listed).

In the end, you need to downgrade your Gold account to Silver to remove that card from your account, then you use the pre-paid card to get back to Gold. Of course they don’t explain this, and I spent several hours trying to get simple answers out of them, but after 5 or 6 calls I finally got through to someone with a clue and got it straight with the downgrade/upgrade process that makes no sense.

You’re right it makes no sense – when you downgrade does it cost you what live time you have built up? They let you reuse a prepaid card although technically you’re not “using it” since it’s canceled out of your account. That’s just bizarre

what confuses me more than anything is that they didn’t revert his Gold back to Silver once the CC was declined.
I had autorenew on when my Gold expired and the CC was expired. They tried to charge it, it didn’t work and they sent me back to silver.
The planets must have alligned just right to caused a mess this bad.

I don’t use a credit card to subscribe to live, I buy subscription cards when they are on the cheap and use those. I only use my credit card to buy points when I want to buy a game. For the last 5 years, every single time my account comes due MS charges my credit card without my permission. Every SINGLE year I call them up multiple times and have them remove auto-renewal, and it doesn’t do a thing. I even had removed the auto-renewal through the site a couple of times, but somehow it keeps getting reactivated like clockwork. Oh, but now you can’t do it through the site anymore, you have to call them up, and an agent specifically told me it was so they could up-sale the people that were forced to call.

This is old news, but it does indeed need repeating because you won’t believe it until it happens to you:

This is the way Xbox Live “works.” It SUCKS. If you do not call and cancel BEFORE your bill is due, they will bill you. You can’t assume that since the credit card is expired that they will just turn your account to silver, and then you can re-up with a pre-paid card later.

THEY WANT YOUR CREDIT CARD- they will do whatever they can to retain it.

Personally, I tried to do this BEFORE my bill was due and it still took about 4 hours on the phone, with 3 different phone calls, to be able to have them remove the old credit card and allow me to use prepaid. I wanted to remove it belonged to my ex-boyfriend and I didn’t want it charging his card. It was a massive undertaking, and it still is today.

Same thing happened to me a few years ago. I paid for my first year on my card and before it expired, bought a one-year XBL card and put it on, thinking it’d roll over (since my CC was expiring and i didn’t want to use my new one).

Nope. After several calls to Xbox support, I had to pay with a credit card, turn off auto-renew and then the following year, the pre-paid card took effect.

An amusing side note: when I used my new card to pay for that second year, it was declined. I called the issuer and they told me they had a temporary block on purchases with Microsoft due to fraudulent activity reported by toehrs that they were investigating. They removed the temp block, but only after I agreed to not fight any charges from Microsoft afterward.

This happened to me back in July of 2010. I sent an e-mail to Microsoft explaining what happened. Someone contacted me in 24 hours about it and 2 days later it was fixed with a new prepaid code. Send that e-mail to khogan@microsoft.com.